The steps were but a long ladder set in the wall, not the great
staircase used by the hands: that was on the other side of the
factory. It was a huge, unwieldy building, such as crowd the
suburbs of trading towns. This one went round the four sides of
a square, with the yard for the vats in the middle. The ladders
and passages she passed down were on the inside, narrow and dimly
lighted: she had to grope her way sometimes. The floors shook
constantly with the incessant thud of the great looms that filled
each story, like heavy, monotonous thunder. It deafened her,
made her dizzy, as she went down slowly. It was no short walk to
reach the lower hall, but she was down at last. Doors opened
from it into the ground-floor ware-rooms; glancing in, she saw
vast, dingy recesses of boxes piled up to the dark ceilings.
There was a crowd of porters and draymen cracking their whips,
and lounging on the trucks by the door, waiting for loads,
talking politics, and smoking. The smell of tobacco, copperas,
and burning logwood was heavy to clamminess here. She stopped,
uncertain. One of the porters, a short, sickly man, who stood
aloof from the rest, pushed open a door for her with his staff.
Margret had a quick memory for faces; she thought she had seen
this one before as she passed,--a dark face, sullen,
heavy-lipped, the hair cut convict-fashion, close to the head.
She thought too, one of the men muttered "jail-bird," jeering him
for his forwardness. "Load for Clinton! Western Railroad!" sung
out a sharp voice behind her, and, as she went into the street, a
train of cars rushed into the hall to be loaded, and men swarmed
out of every corner,--red-faced and pale, whiskey-bloated and
heavy-brained, Irish, Dutch, black, with souls half asleep
somewhere, and the destiny of a nation in their grasp,--hands,